


Slow

by YunhosFlower



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:49:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22504309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YunhosFlower/pseuds/YunhosFlower
Relationships: Choi San/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 60





	Slow

You had no idea why you were here.   
  
At the gym.   
  
You’d never liked the place, much less because your ex frequented it so often that it was a blessing when you’d walked in, a spare change of clothes clutched too tight in your fingers, that he wasn’t anywhere to be found.   
  
You hated the way that the air smelt of sweat and overexertion, that you could almost _feel_ the pressing weight of testosterone hanging around you.   
  
Most of all you hated the way that almost every male in here stopped what they were doing momentarily the second that a girl walked into their midst, their gazes not so subtly following your every movement right up until you whipped around to grab the eye contact of the nearest with an irritated clear of your throat.   
  
Instantly he dropped his gaze back to the weights that were slowly beginning to slip from his sweaty fingertips, hefting them back up with a grunt that spurred everyone else back into action.   
  
You’d resisted the urge to roll your eyes only because you could still feel a pair of curious eyes on you as you beelined straight for the only machine that you’d ever really bothered to figure out how to use in any gym.   
  
The treadmill.   
  
You weren’t sure if it was because running was easy for you to do that you were attracted to the machine, or if it was truly just because it was the only thing that you knew how to use the first time that your ex had brought you here with him.   
  
It didn’t take long for sweat to bead on your skin and start dripping, sliding messily into every crevice of your body as your feet pummelled relentlessly against the pace you’d set for yourself and the rest of the world around you became both a physical and figurative blur.   
  
Soon every part of you ached and burned and your pace was slowing, but your mind wasn’t.   
  
You still couldn’t figure out why you’d come here of all places.   
  
If you’d wanted to run you could have just as easily done it outside, weather be damned, in fact you probably would have enjoyed that more.   
  
So why the hell had you dragged yourself across town into the one place that you had a statistically higher chance of running into the only person you wanted to avoid right now?  
  
 _Maybe because you don’t actually want to avoid him?_ You tried to ignore the voice in the back of your head, desperately throwing the remainder of your energy into one last burst on the treadmill, your heavy pants filling the air now. 

You needed to stop thinking about it, about him.   
  
But you couldn’t.   
  
_Because you want to ask him why he did it._ The voice was back the moment your shaking legs slowed down and you let out a groan, flicking the machine off and bracing yourself against the front of it, forehead pressing stickily against it as you tried to catch your breath.   
  
_You know it’s going to hurt ten thousand times more than it already does, but you still want to know why he cheated on you when you gave him everything you had._  
  
You couldn’t tell if tears were sliding down your face or if it was more sweat, and frankly you didn’t care. You were just glad that in the time you’d been running most of the gym had cleared out, you were pretty sure there was only one other person in here.

  
Your chest hurt with every breath and you were pretty confident that the pain was a mix between your breaking heart and your lungs complaining at the abuse you’d just put them through.   
  
Your shoulders shook with something that was possibly sobs, or maybe something else and you found your body sliding down until you were on the floor, knees clutched to your chest as you rocked yourself.   
  
You had no idea how long you sat with your face buried between the tops of your knees, or how many people came and went in that time, but when a soft hand touched your elbow you started violently, throwing yourself away from the simple touch like it was poison.   
  
“Woah!” Tanned hands lifted palm upwards in a display of surrender as you threw a dazed and panicked look upwards, your fingers dug tightly into the carpeted ground below you, the friction burning your skin.   
  
You followed the hands back to the attractive face peering you with, of all things, concern. You’d seen him before, though right now you were struggling to place where as you stared silently at him.   
  
“Y/n, right?” He said, voice smooth and soft like honey as he shifted cautiously closer, hands still out in front of him like you were going to leap at him and rip him to pieces if he didn’t.   
  
He had long blonde hair, the dark roots beginning to show as they grew back below, a look that at first glance of his face alone you wouldn’t have thought would suit him but somehow it accentuated his delicate features.   
  
You didn’t bother using your voice to respond, not entirely sure that you still had one, so you simply jerked your head in a semblance of a nod, gaze exploring the rest of him curiously.   
  
He had piercings in both ears, though the left had one more than the right, and you couldn’t help noticing that the sides of his long hair were somewhat tinged with silver that mixed with the predominant blonde locks, barely noticeable.   
  
He was dressed half appropriately for the gym and half inappropriately. While his dark skinny jeans, cinched tightly to his waist with a dark belt probably weren’t the best for working out in, the black tank top that covered his torso, baring his well muscled arms, was entirely something you’d expect to see on someone working out.   
  
You resisted the urge to point out to him that he should really make up his mind before coming into a gym half dressed for it, half not, mostly because you were transfixed by the way his collarbones poked out from below the neckline of his tank top.   
  
He blinked, seeming to know that you weren’t done assessing him with your eyes and watching you back patiently while your eyes flickered to look at his small hands, hands that somehow felt off compared to the well built body beyond them.   
  
“I’m San by the way.” He said with a smile that brought out two matching dimples in his cheeks, making your heart stutter in utter confusion. With that smile painted on his face he looked disarmingly childlike and beautiful, the complete opposite to the undeniably hot figure that was kneeling before you seconds ago.   
  
“What do you want?” You choked out, surprising you both with the ragged question tearing from your dry throat. San blinked, his smile slipping somewhat as he chewed on his lip, clearly trying to summon up some explanation for approaching you.   
  
More prominent on your mind was the question of how the hell he knew you well enough to know your name and yet you couldn’t place where the hell you’d seen a face like his before that wasn’t in a club.  
  
Because despite his looks, you highly doubted that San was someone who frequented clubs, because however hot he was, that smile he’d just flashed you did not scream ‘fuck boy’ to you.   
  
But then again, your ex hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy who’d rip out your heart and then kick it around in the dust, yet he had.   
  
Fresh tears pricked the back of your eyes at the thought, trying desperately to keep the doors locked on the memories beating down on one side of your mind.   
  
“Honestly?” San asked, his eyes narrowing as you clearly struggled to hold yourself together in front of him, his forehead creasing in a slight frown while your breathing hitched. “You looked like you needed a friend right now.”   
  
There was something else in his voice that tipped you off that something else was up, that there was a lot more to it than you needing a friend.   
  
But in this moment, you couldn’t care less if San had some other motivation for approaching you.   
  
You were barely summoning the energy to keep your tears from spilling in tidal waves down your cheeks, let alone trying to delve deeper into the tight clench of his jaw as he watched you.   
  
“Well I’m fine, so you can just leave now.” You coughed, turning your face away from him out of instinct. Lying to peoples faces was hard enough when you weren’t being betrayed by your own body.   
  
San made a soft knowing noise in the back of his throat that shattered you from the inside out, ripping away your restraint like a bandaid and setting free the flow of silent tears you’d been desperately trying to reel in.   
  
Before you knew it, warm arms were encasing your body, drawing you tight against a hard chest that you spent less than a second deciding to bury your face into as weak sobs ripped out of you.   
  
This was by far the craziest, stupidest, weirdest thing you’d ever done. Crying into the arms of a complete stranger who seemed to know you but had yet to explain how…   
  
It wasn’t like you at all.   
  
“I’m sorry.” San all but breathed against the top of your head, his body tense around you, almost like he were trying to protect you from something.   
  
You didn’t bother telling him that he’d completely missed the ball park in being there to do this when your boyfriend was shattering your heart.   
  
And then your body froze, mind catching up with the situation finally.   
  
“San?” Your voice was smaller than you would have liked as you leaned back to stare up at the boy, his eyes flashing guiltily down at you.   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“Oh.”   
  
You remembered him now, and where you’d last, or first, seen him. It had been the first time you met any of your ex’s friends, and to call it meeting might have been a stretch for the rushed introductions that you’d been given to the small group of boys waiting around the outside of the club for your boyfriend.   
  
_“.. And this is San. But he rarely ever spends time with us.” You’d followed the hurried wave that your boyfriend lifted in the direction of the boy leaning against the furthest possible part of the wall, his eyes narrow and annoyed.  
  
_ His hair had been red and black back then, and there had been no dimpled smile flashed to you, rather an irritated scowl tossed in the direction of your boyfriend when he made some snide comment about San having a bigger group of friends that he spent most of his time with.   
  
Even back then you’d gotten the impression that San wasn’t your boyfriend’s biggest fan, you’d wondered briefly then why he even bothered hanging around him and your thoughts returned to that train of thought now as San let go of you, giving you some space to work through things in your mind.   
  
“I don’t understand.” You muttered, looking once again up at San, who was running his fingers through his hair, arms flexing to release some of his tension.   
  
He grimaced at your words, nodding as if he’d been expecting, no waiting, for you to say those words.   
  
“Look I’m not some creepy stalker, if that’s what your immediate thought is.” He rushed to say, his hands twisting together in front of him and you nodded, indicating you were ready to listen to him.   
  
He took a deep breath, looking upwards to the ceiling for a long moment before his soft voice began spewing words out towards you.  
  
“I actually came here to find your..” He flashed you a quick look and you tried your best to hold up a wall between you, to hide your emotions. “ex, because I heard about what happened between you.”   
  
You weren’t sure how it was possible for you to be more confused, but you were.   
  
What did it matter to San what went on between you and your ex, he’d met you once and it had been fleeting and not long enough to leave much of a lasting impression you were sure.   
  
“A mutual friend told me that he’d cheated on you,” San looked mad now, his hands curling into fists as his side and his jaw stretching taut, eyes fixing heatedly on yours. “So I told him to meet me here, to talk.”   
  
The word talk was loaded with a bit too much anger for you to believe that that was all that San had intended to go on here.   
  
“But the coward didn’t show and I was about to leave when you came in. At first I didn’t think it was you, because why the hell would you be here of all places, you had to know he comes here all the time and I couldn’t believe that you’d ever want to see his face again.”   
  
San drew in a shaking breath, moving to sit beside you now, his arms resting straight over his knees, fingertips dangling listlessly in the air in front of him.   
  
“Then I thought maybe you’d been stupid enough to get back with him after what he did and I was so mad that I stayed, hoping despite myself that he would show up to meet you, so that at the very least I’d get my shot at him.”   
  
At some point you’d stopped breathing.   
  
It was probably the point when San’s thigh had pressed flush against yours while he spoke, eyes fixed straight ahead and slightly glazed over, probably not even noticing the contact that you were trying to also not notice.  
  
“But then people began leaving and you were still here, running and…” San closed his eyes tightly, pain flashing across his handsome features that took you off guard. You were pretty sure you’d never been so confused. “I was just going to leave, I kept telling myself just to leave and let you be. That there was nothing I could do or say _now_ that was going to save you the pain that I could have saved you months ago.”   
  
Well that made a bit more sense.   
  
So he’d known about the cheating, and he felt guilty for not telling you.   
  
You couldn’t summon up the will to hate him for it though, because you didn’t know him. He didn’t know you, there was no reason that he should tell you that _his_ friend was cheating on you, his loyalty by all rights should be with his friend before you.   
  
Although you suspected there was more to it than that.   
  
“But I couldn’t leave you here alone. And I swear, I wasn’t going to come up to you but then you stopped and I thought you might finally leave but you didn’t. You started.. and I just couldn’t..” He looks at you finally, his expression so helpless and guilty that you can’t help feeling a twinge of understanding in your chest.   
  
So you nod, rather than get up and stalk away from the last connection you have to your ex.   
  
But you don’t speak.   
  
Because what can you even say now?   
  
And San goes silent, lips pressed tightly together as he averts his gaze, his thigh shifting slightly against yours like he wants to move it but doesn’t know how.   
  
Part of you wants him to move it, to get up and walk away now that he’s unearthed everything, while another part of you needs him to stay, because hes the only person left who seems to care about _you._

“What I still don’t understand,” You begin, braving a look sideways at him when his gaze snaps instantly and attentively to you. “Is why you care? San you don’t even know me, we met once and then your dick of a friend cheated on me a week later over the course of three months. So why does it bother you so much?”  
  
He looks surprised for a moment, his soft lips falling open in a small, deflated and silent ‘o’ that in any other situation you’d have giggled over and thought was the cutest thing you’d ever seen.   
  
Then the hint of a dimple appears in his left cheek, a bashful smile creeping onto his lips that he tries to hide by looking away from you quickly.   
  
“You think I don’t know you? Wow, I really must have been invisible in high school.” He murmurs aloud, side eyeing you as he speaks, waiting for your reaction.   
  
It’s admittedly slow, a good few seconds passing in which you can only stare uncomprehendingly back at him until it clicks somewhere in the recesses of your mind, your hands flying to your lips with a shocked exclamation.   
  
“Every year, we had at least one class together.” San lifts a single digit in the air beside you, wiggling it cheekily before letting his hand fall back down, coincidentally brushing against the edge of your thigh that his isn’t already pressed against, sending electric sparks through you.   
  
“No.” You said dumbly, shaking your head for emphasis until he lets out a high pitched laugh that makes your heart squeeze.   
  
It’s the laugh that solidifies things though, because you would recognise that laugh almost anywhere.   
  
You couldn’t even count on both fingers how many times that laugh had driven you crazy, coming from the back of your classes, distracting you while you tried to immerse yourself in your studying.   
  
There had been times where you had very nearly stood up on your table to get a view of the class, to single out the owner of the laughter, although you’d never quite got there before the teacher would rap a desk at the back of the class, silencing the laughter instantly.   
  
“Wow.” You shook your head now, letting it thump back against the wall.   
  
San hummed in amusement, shifting again, somehow bringing himself closer to you, his muscled arm pressing against your considerably smaller one as he leaned forward to peer at you.   
  
“You really didn’t know?” He asked, eyebrow cocking curiously at you. You blinked, taken aback by the sudden closeness of his face and by your less sudden but still surprising desire to take his sharp jaw between your hands and kiss his soft lips.  
  
Up this close you realised just how soft his hair looked, the length just perfect for you to run your fingers through and a tiny sigh released out of you against your will.   
  
“No, I didn’t know, San.” His name felt different on your lips this time, like liquid silk and you could tell he noticed it too because with his proximity you could feel his body tense suddenly against yours.   
  
He didn’t say anything though, remaining almost statue still, his eyes flickering between yours and your lips, as if just now realising how close he’d come to you.   
  
“I..” He swallowed, biting hard down on his lip in a way that made you want to throw yourself at him.   
  
_Stop it, you barely know him and you just broke up with your boyfriend._ You tried to remind yourself, barely able to stop yourself from leaning in minuscule inch by inch towards him, drawn in like a magnet by his narrowed eyes that watched you carefully.   
  
But it couldn’t be any clearer to you just how different San was from your ex.   
  
Where he had been rough edges that needed a thousand years worth of polishing to make him into a good person who deserved happiness, San was already there, all soft edges with just the right sharp corners.

  
It was clear that the attractive guy held some kind of feelings for you, and you’d be downright lying if you denied being completely drawn and attracted to him too.   
  
A whine built up in the back of your throat the nearer to him you got, so close now that you see the way his Adam’s apple bobbed with a deep swallow, very nearly sending you over the edge at that sight alone.   
  
“Y-Y/n.” He stuttered out, lips very nearly brushing against yours now, his dark eyes widening a little at you, desperate and pleading.   
  
You held your breath for a moment, trying once more to think things through rationally.   
  
You shouldn’t let this happen, shouldn’t fall for him so quickly, shouldn’t want him the way you did.   
  
But he was… he felt safe in a way that your ex never had, in a way that made you want to curl up against his chest and have his fingers sift through the strands of your hair, his lips against your skin, soft voice whispering in your ear.   
  
So in a way, it was already decided for you.   
  
“Kiss me.” You barely whispered, giving in and grabbing loosely at the neckline of his shirt, drawing him across the small gap left between you.   
  
He didn’t need it though, his hands already at your waist, lifting you onto his lap and attaching his mouth to yours like it was made to be there, his tongue asking for access in a gentlest way unlike anybody you’d been with ever had before.

  
Nobody had ever held you so tightly but so softly, like you were the most important thing in the world and your hands steadied yourself on his shoulders, fingers running over the rippling muscles below them.   
  
You’d never wanted someone so badly.   
  
You granted him access, groaning into his mouth when his tongue swept its way inside, attacking your senses with pleasure, his teeth occasionally nipping at your lip encouragingly.   
  
One of your hands found its way to the back of his hair, tugging gently at the strands until you earned a delicious sound from the back of his throat that drew you away from his mouth, your lips brushing softly and carefully over the skin of his neck, placing light kisses.   
  
Your eyes took in the beautiful splattering of freckles that dusted below his jaw and you pulled away from him, observing him through wide eyes as he panted below you.   
  
He stared back up at you, hair slightly disheveled now and hands resting on the top of your thighs, eyes glazed over.   
  
You bit hard on your lip.   
  
“We can stop.” He whispered, eyes fluttering to your mouth even as he spoke, his words ringing with sincerity and his body already shifting to remove you from his lip.   
  
“Wait.” You put a hand on his chest, stopping him.   
  
It wasn’t that you wanted to stop necessarily.   
  
He was beautiful, he was more than you could ever deserve.   
  
Which was why you couldn’t just rush into this, you couldn’t take any more pain and the very idea of this being nothing more to San than a one off hookup made your heart clench with various emotions, none of which were positive.   
  
“I want to do this.” You told him, breathing in deeply and forcing yourself to relax against him. “But..”   
  
He reached up to cup your jaw, the dimples making a reappearance as he smiled understandingly.   
  
“We can go slow.” He murmured, leaning up to press his forehead against yours, lips pressing quickly against yours before pulling away.   
  
Slow.   
  
You liked that idea. 


End file.
